From doc dais, CM addresses the larger constituency
Times of India | 15 September 2024
Kolkata: CM Mamata Banerjee spent around 24 minutes on a rainy Saturday morning at the Swasthya Bhawan protest site — speaking to the agitating doctors for over 17 minutes — and in doing so addressed a larger constituency beyond it.
Facing a deepening crisis which slowly prompted her not-so-vocal supporters to vociferously question the state’s role in precipitating the R G Kar crisis, CM Banerjee took the reins herself and after discussing with only a few close confidantes late into Friday night, headed straight to protest zone around 1 pm, ignoring police caution of walking in midst of a restive crowd.
Among the first to react was Jawhar Sircar, the just-resigned Trinamool MP, who wrote on X, “Bah (loosely translated as wow)!” It was Sircar who questioned in his Sept 8 resignation letter to CM Banerjee that “for the last one month (since the R G Kar issue) I have wondered why Mamata Banerjee — like the one she used to be — is not talking to the protesting doctors directly.” An hour before Sircar’s post, another party MP, actor Dev, who had rarely spoken for the party on the issue, also took to X a little after 2 pm, saying, “Didi, I salute you. I have always seen how you stand by people, today I witnessed it again.”
Sircar and Dev were also the audience Banerjee reached out to on Saturday morning. Banerjee-led Trinamool’s overwhelming victories in successive general elections since 2011 are also attributed partly to how talented professionals had been drawn to it, helping it expand its base. In stooping to conquer, Banerjee herself said on Saturday, “Coming before you do not belittle me, it only makes me bigger,” allaying a growing perception that she is moving away from people.
A dogmatic political approach trying to shout down the opposition did not work during the Singur and Nandigram agitation in the former Left regime. And none knows it better than Banerjee, the then opposition leader. “In a world of king-sized egos, some actions stand apart,” Derek O’Brien, Trinamool’s Rajya Sabha leader, said.
With the CM heading out to the site on her own, even senior netas and ministers were taken by surprise. The party had alleged that these protests were being stoked by a section of CPM and ultra-Left leaders, with tacit support by BJP. The party, also the administration, has been speaking on how the poor were being denied treatment. The state has already announced a Rs 2-lakh compensation to the kin of 29 dead due to lack of treatment. It was in this backdrop that even after waiting for talks at Nabanna for two days, the CM went to the protest site.
A senior neta said, “She made the big mistake initially of transferring the principal, but ultimately, like a veteran politician, waited patiently and tried out everybody else. Junior doctors had no exit strategy — they should have set a limited target, achieved it and declared victory. Mamata Banerjee closed it out today — queen of the streets.” Party’s ex-Rajya Sabha MP Kunal Ghosh said, “This is not for us to speak on. We have noticed how she reached out to the doctors, not as a CM. We all want that justice should prevail, but not at the cost of poor lives. Keep faith on CM Banerjee, return to work, is all we would want to say to the doctors.”